The “greening” of the energy economy, increasing demand and use of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, and the expected proliferation for example of plug-in hybrid vehicles and all electric vehicles, increasingly strain the electricity distribution grid. High capacity electrical energy storage technologies such as pumped hydroelectric can play an important role in grid load balancing, time shifting renewable energy sources from time of generation to peak time of use, however, geography and cost limit their use, particularly on a local level.
Existing high capacity battery technologies, for example flow batteries, are too expensive for widespread adoption because the effective cost of the resulting energy and/or power delivered is well above market prices. There exists therefore a substantially unmet need for a low-cost, high-capacity, efficient and high performance battery technology.